


you don't have to answer

by cicadas



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Eating Disorders, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, LGBTQ Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-08 20:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16436423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicadas/pseuds/cicadas
Summary: Wanda doesn't have a good relationship with food. She doesn't see this as a problem.





	1. youth

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the tags. If topics relating to food restriction and disordered eating behaviours trigger/upset you, please tread with caution.

In her early years, days without food are a regular occurrence. They're part of routine. School, walking home with Pietro, tiptoe to the kitchen. Never ask, but look closely at her parent's faces - sometimes Mama will be in the kitchen already preparing beets and vegetables for a broth or a stew (they rarely ate meat. On the days they did they'd sit at the table for hours and listen to their father tell stories about the people he works with and chew, slowly, slowly at their food). Other times their parents would be sitting at the dining table shuffling papers, or Papa would be smoking with the window cracked slightly, and the tobacco would send a sick feeling to her stomach. She wasn't hungry anyway.

Sometimes Pietro had candies he traded cards and marbles and trinkets he found, kept them tucked between his pillow and pillowcase, and would share them with her on those nights the hunger pangs stopped them from sleeping.

 

Wanda knows what it's like to feel hunger, and she knows what its like to feel angry.  
The year a bomb fell through her family's living room, the two combined in her gut like twisted metal. Turned into something sharp and ugly. The two days she spends trapped under metres of rubble, her twin brother murmuring reassurances and shouting curses at the workers around them, she focuses on the pain in her stomach. Not her arms, or head, or the way her tongue is sticking to her throat and feels like the flesh will peel away any time. Her gut aches, and it only makes her angrier.

She looks across at the explosive nestled between to mounds of shattered concrete.

_Stark._

Stark. The American she's seen on TV. Warmonger proclaiming he fights for peace, inventing weapons for America's self-righteous military. She stares, and the ache in her body has a name. Hunger. Anger. Stark.

 

-

 

They petition. They riot. They're arrested multiple times - Pietro twice more than Wanda for stealing, both from their local market (a fresh loaf of olive bread) and the convenience stores that crop up every corner (two flavoured milks and some American candy - Reece's Cups or something of the like).

The hunger she's known since a child remains within her, and she keeps it that way. It fuels her more than the stolen goods do for Pietro. She eats half-price end-of-day Borscht and peaches and one dollar black coffee wherever they stop long enough to sit down.

She leans out. Cheeks going from round to slender to hollow, but she's always been petite, so she tells her brother this whenever he brings up her size. Besides, that isn't the point. She needs this. The anger. The pain. Motivation to keep moving with their cause. Rid the world of Stark, and finally that feeling will go. She knows he doesn't get it, so she doesn't explain the last part. Assures him she'll have soup with him when they find it next and that she feels fine.

She doesn't, but she will. She knows she will soon.

 

-

 

She agrees to Strucker's experiments - volunteers, Pietro wary but unwilling to leave her - and the months she spends underground only harden her resolve.

It's cold, always. This climate having more of a bite than the usual Sokovian winters. The walls are concrete and glass. She's separated from her twin for over eight hours a day, and has needles in her back for four. They decide after the first month to strap her arms and wrists because she scratches at the entry point where metal disappears into skin. She spits out the poor attempt at a traditional Slavic dish they spoon-feed her, and they don't return with a replacement.

Her arms stay small, but the muscle doesn't wane underneath. She tenses against the restraints for a seven weeks before they decide on a formula they think is working with her blood, and they need her mobile to monitor its effects.

She talks to herself at night, and hums along with the growling coming from her stomach.

She hears from cell to cell her brother is frustrating - they're needing to feed him more and more due to his metabolism increasing. It's taking a while, but his body is accepting the experimental drugs. He's mutating. She smiles. He's strong. Growing stronger. They both are.

Wanda feels the hunger gnawing at her insides. A beast she nurtures, growing within her.

And the anger grows with it.

 


	2. voice

In her cell, Wanda finds a voice within her. Her own gets stronger, her mind, her hands, gripping at air, tangible power between her fingers, under her nails, pulsing blood to her heart. The voice gains a life of its own the same way her newfound power does. A constant pressure in her brain. A presence.

Compelling. Compulsion.

They've mutated - both her brother and she - and they're allowed free roam of the building most of the time. They're reliable. Their anger firm is in their bones. They can be counted on to hate. To follow orders. The dark, heavy stone walls keep others out, but Wanda knows its to keep them in. To keep them hidden. It's not about safety, its about advantage. She's a weapon. Pietro is a weapon. Prized possessions.

They'll do what they have to until the time comes their own cause takes the forefront. Her brother has faith in her. She can feel the presence of the world in her mind, in her hands. She'll know when it's time, 

 

When she sees the Avengers for the first time, properly - real, flesh bodies moving in front of her, not staticky pictures on the TV, not far-away visions confused by the speed of her brother - she's prepared.

Stark's creation shares their vision, and she knows he's what they need to bring down the Avengers.

_This is what you're made for. This is what you've grown to be. You will succeed._

It encourages, tells her things she knows, things she needs to be reminded of.

_You're empty. This is good._ _It makes you strong._

She pushes her pain into their minds, making them feel, remember, and it ruins them. She twists her fingers around the Captain's head, red seeping into the auburn hair of the Widow, eyes glowing as she seeks out the next.  
She doesn't see the marksman behind her. She'd been so good, so accurate. Then all she feels is pain. Pietro carries her out. She turns her pain to anger and as a result a city is nearly levelled by the anger matching in the good doctor.

She tries to ignore the part that blames her for each and every death. Instead, she shifts it to Stark. Even bigger armour covering his ego, battling his teammate just as she'd hoped. The casualties are his fault. Her parents are gone because of  _him._

 

 

Wanda feels hate.

She feels disgust.

That night, Pietro brings her dinner - a box of noodles with vegetable and beef stirred through - and she eats it with sharp bites, swallowing fast to get another forkful in.

Disgust.

_This isn't what you need._

_Get rid of it. You need the pain. You need that ache to be powerful. You're nothing with this inside you._

Disgust.

She sets the box down - empty, weight of the fork tipping it over as she stands and rushes out the open door of the building they're staying in. The night is cool, slight wind tangling in her hair as she tucks it over her shoulder and under the strap of her bra. She leans forward, parallel to the graffiti-covered brick wall, and heaves. The pressure in her chest does nothing, so she brings a hand up, index and middle fingers poised, pressing past her lips, over her tongue, against the back of her throat. Her nails scratch at the tender flesh. She heaves. Once. Twice. Wiggles her fingers, and- the half-chewed food cuts off her air as it comes back up, covering her hands and then the ground with beige-covered slime.

Wanda sees it, grimaces, and brings her fingers back again.

She heaves. Her lungs ache as her breathing is interrupted again, and again, the slick feeling of the food she was never meant to eat making her want to throw up.

_Ironic,_ she thinks.

 

_This is your fault,_ the voice replies.

_This didn't have to happen. You caused this. You weren't strong._

 

No, she wasn't. She was hungry. Tired. Exhausted. She didn't want her brother to worry, she didn't want to feel dizzy for at least a half hour.

In one year, she'd become a shell.

This wasn't what she'd planned. Wasn't the kind of strength she'd expected. But she trusted the ache, she trusted her anger, and knew she felt it strongest when the childhood hunger was eating at her.

She didn't need to stand tall. She had her brother.

She could ignore the bruises that bloomed across her knuckles and knees - she could bring down the world with her fingertips.

 

 


	3. lost

When the Avengers first take her in, Wanda is a mess.

Her brother is gone. Her routine is gone. The reason for her pain is a man with a life filled with as much agony as her own. He gives her a uniform, a room to train, a reason to keep fighting.

She follows Clint as often as she can. The man who encouraged her, pushed her to be more for _good,_ and in turn she is introduced to Natasha. The Widow. The spy.

The woman who knows everything about everyone but gives nothing of herself. Wanda watches her with Steve, the captain, and with Stark. Watches her smile only when she thinks she's alone, around Clint, and harden her features at raised voices or authority. The mask she puts on that nobody thinks she has.

She's as much exposed as Banner is. Open skin. Open fire. Open wounds.

 

She's given a room and a tour of the new compound, and she feels empty in the single double-bed. The room is filled with things for a twenty-four year old, a new camera, books, a Starkpad and a phone - "It's a private, secure number, you don't have to worry".

The room is full. She's what's empty.

 

-

 

At dinnertime, Wanda eats.

She spoons mashed potatoes made from a powder and gravy, also made from a powder, onto her plate. She piles green peas boiled from frozen and blanched-orange carrot slices and some form of meat shaving coated in a thicker gravy ("We usually stick that between bread, but it works as a dish, too") with chunks of onion suspended in the blobs on her plate.

Steve cooked. Says he misses providing something, being useful in a homey sort of way, and insisted he do the whole meal, including buying the groceries from a supermarket closest to them.

He buys groceries like a poor kid. Everything packeted, frozen, dried, in un-branded bags with half dollar price tags. Wanda could relate. She eats large portions with oversized stainless-steel forks and knives she's sure has some kind of heat-sensitive tech in it. She asks, but Stark doesn't answer her question. 

_He still hates you for what you dod to him. To Bruce. To that city._

_To your brother. (Could have saved him)_

Wanda grips the fork harder. Swigs water from a glass in her other hand and clears her mouth so she can spoon a fresh mound of sloppy meat into her mouth, chewing loud and gross enough to shut the voice up until dessert.

It works. The next day she eats breakfast with Natasha - coconut yoghurt and slivers of apple, crushed walnut and fresh blueberries, sprinkle of coconut and cinnamon on top. Wanda's never eaten something so elaborately simple. It's delicious. The shared silence in the kitchen of her and Nat sitting, comfortable, eating and sipping black coffee at the island bench, made it even nicer.

Nat doesn't ask her about the strange way she holds the tiny spoon, or how she dips two fingers into the glass bowl and swirls it around, gathering the yoghurt the spoon couldnt scrape up. Wanda sucks on her fingers like a child, and after some side-eyeing, Nat dips a tentative pinkie into her own bowl and does the same.

The Voice - her Voice - is silent, drowned by excessive mashed potato that still hasn't been digested and two bowls of dessert. (She didn't throw up. Wanted to, felt so full and ashamed and took that as sickness, but she was smiling at her place at the table and couldn't stand to leave that to stare into the shiny toilet bowl of her bedroom).

She doesn't have it in her to carry that guilt to the kitchen in the morning, and of course she's going to accept brrakfast if Natasha is the one making it. The one offering. The one smiling at her in that private way that's rarely seen, and now she's eating on a full stomach in quiet company.

_Stupid stupid stupid stupid._

_You're not worth this._

 

At lunctime Wanda raids the pantry for jam biscuits, half-ripe bananas, Pop-Tarts, chip packets - chicken flavour, salt and balsamic vinegar, chilli flakes and onion. Someone brings pizza back from an outing and she eats two slices from each box, grease staining her fingers, toppings falling from her giggling lips as she listens to Clint complain about something or other.

Nat is listening too, relaxed against the couch opposite her.

She hasn't touched the pizza.

_You want to be just like her but you won't. Not like this. You think she'd even look at food like that? No, but you do, and she's seen that. She'll never like you like this._

Deeper down, the voice says,

_Get rid of it._

Wanda excuses herself and is making her way to her room in the next instant. Ducking her head down, hair like a curtain over her face as she uses her hands to feel along the walls. She reaches her door. The material senses her prints and it slides open, metal dissapearing behind shiny walls, and closes again with her on the other side.

 

In the bathroom, Wanda washes her hands.

She unrolls a few sheets of toilet tissue and layers them over the water in the bowl. There's no-one around to hear, but the habit moved her hands before she could really think twice about it.

She's getting ready to lean over and tense her chest into her back - hair tucked, sleeves pushed up, hands clean - when there's a knock on the door.

"Hey," It's Natasha. Fuck, she must have followed her out. "You kind of rushed off back there...You, ah, feeling okay?"

If she wasn't about to make herself throw up, Wanda might've been excited about the fact ahe was at her door.

If she didn't feel she might burst into tears, she might've answered.

Her hands - two fingers clawed, ready to scrape at her insides - don't shake, but she could feel the buzz of _shame_ and and _disgust_ under her skin, in her stomach, that she may as well be shaking.

Wanda drops to her knees in front of the toilet and bites back a sob.

"Wanda?"

"Fine! I'm fine. Please go." She says, and the lump in her throat is impossible to speak through.

"Alright. Come out when you're ready."

Nat sounds unsure, hesitant, but leaves anyway.

 

Wanda sits, listening for her footsteps, knees tucked up and cheek pressed agaisnt the tile of the bathroom wall.

When she's sure she's gone, she wraps both arms around her stomach and cries.

 

 


	4. out

Wanda takes to washing her hands. Frequent, warm water, bubbly soap, hand sanitizer. She uses the special 4-ply paper towel in the second floor bathroom. She sneaks into rooms to check what kind of decorative soaps they have. So far she's made it to the gym showers and Vision's room, as he doesn't have a door.

She stays away from Natasha's room. Stays away from Natasha, too.

It's the exact opposite of what she wants to do, but it's what she has to do, and she doesn't have to explain herself so it's okay. She's just lost her brother so her actions are justified.

Rolls of paper towel go missing in the compound, and Wanda begins a nice stash under her bed.  
Surprisingly, she doesn't use it to wipe her hands after throwing up. It's too special for such a shameful act.

 

She's been better. Whether that means she's better now, or has been better before, she still hasn't decided. She misses Pietro. Her brother. With her since the womb. She turns to tell him things -  something she's thought of, ask him a question, snicker about the actions of her enemies-turned-friends. He's never there to hear her.

She cries a lot, and that curbs her appetite enough to down four black coffees to keep her fake-full. She used to drink so much while meandering along Sokovian streets, too slow to be travelling but moving too much to be considered visiting. Staying, sleeping, living. They were constantly moving, and now all of a sudden Wanda is a leftover half of the  _something bigger_ she and her brother were going to be. He's gone and she's still here, flailing. Sometimes she dreams she still is. Floating, air rushing around her ears hot and loud and chaotically peaceful.

Vision found her, caught her, flew her out of there to some. She wasn't strong enough to fly by herself then. She's stronger now.

 

-

 

It's three weeks and one day after Nat knocked on her door, and she hasn't brought it up since. Not even as she stands in the same place, tapping on the metal with cool fingertips.

"Wanda, it's Nat. I'm off to see Clint and Laura in around an hour. She told me to extend the invitation to you, thought you might want to see the baby, catch up with Clint. There's still another couple days before he comes back." She says.

Wanda's stomach twists. Maybe her liver, or her lungs.Wringing itself tight in her body, pushing a lump into the back of her throat and pins into her eyes. The baby; Nathaniel Pietro Barton. She saw him for the first time on a video call, wearing his own printed tee-shirt with his name in big white letters. She had cooed, teared up, thanked them and left the room a few seconds after. The word 'bittersweet' rolled around on her tongue. She swallowed it.

"I think he'd like to see you," Natasha says through the door.

"Yeah," Wanda says softly.

"Laura also said she'd be willing to make something Sokovian for dinner if you wanted to stay, maybe give her a few tips?"

There's a pause, then Nat adds, "I'd give her more than a few tips, really. There are a few meals she aces but Laura really needs to stop watching those cooking shows where they use 50 ingredients, minimum, and almost every one has a sauce with some kinda wine. You wouldn't expect it from a farm woman, would you?"

"I guess not." Wanda replies. Her voice is soft. She toes the sheet where it tucks into the corner of the bed.

She wants to go. Wants to say yes, she'll be there, and show up looking happy, be a delightful dinner guest, eat the food she's served and let it sit happy and warm within her. Let it digest properly, absorb into her body like it's supposed to. Wants to see little Nathaniel with his pink cheeks and shock of blonde hair, 'just like his daddy'.  
But she can't. For some reason, she just can't. Wouldn't be able to. The weight of the baby's middle name is palpable in her hands. It's a meaning to her. A life, not letters or syllables. Clint's son has nothing to do with how she's feeling. It's all her.

_What's so wrong with you that you won't visit a baby because his name reminds you of your brother? Are you that weak?_

Wanda kicks her foot out. She imagines it colliding with something hard and takes a deep breath (she can't do it).

"I'm sorry, Nat," (her voice is shaky on exhale) "Could you tell them thanks for the invitation, maybe next time? I can't-" _(I can't see that baby (or any of those children, really) without thinking my brother died to make sure he'd have a father)_ "I'm kinda tired."

_I don't want to eat there._

"Okay, I'll knock when I'm leaving in case you change your mind."

_I don't deserve it._

Her boot turns on the smooth floor as she leaves.

_I don't deserve you._

 

-

 

Wanda wonders how many calories she's burned from crying.

Then wonders when the fuck it was ever about calories anyway,.

She skips dinner because it's routine. Goes out at night to run laps because it's what she's used to.

But she still can't help thinking there isn't a point to it anymore.

Her cause is gone. The man she hated for years is an overworked teddy bear. He gives her green smoothies she actually drinks and lets her sit in the shop with him when it's past late and she's restless and his music is blaring. He is no longer an ache, he's Tony.

He understands her, because they're alike. His stomach is lined with lead, too, filled with all the things he says he'll deal with later.

She's not in pain for a reason anymore.

The ache of hunger is just that. The poetic meaning she'd attached to her intended starvation and Stark's name had expired.

She could eat, if she really wanted to. If she tried. If she wanted to be better.

Wanda wonders when she can let that be true.

 

She eats peas, corn and chicken for dinner with Bruce and Thor while watching Robot Wars.

Natasha goes to dinner alone.

 

 


End file.
